February 20, 2007

By Joel Kowalski

Hello All I am now 31 days into my China trip with World Class Kayak Academy (worldclassacademy.com). So far it has been nothing short of amazing. The language barrier is pretty tough though. But the experience is unique to anything I have ever done. One month ago we landed in the city of Lijiang, a very old city popular with Chinese tourists and some westerners. From Lijiang we drove just over an hour to the infamous Tiger Leaping Gorge of the Yangtze river. The gorge is near the top of my list of coolest places I have ever been. The walls are so tall and so steep and capped by giant mountains on either side. The rapids in there were impressive as well. They were pretty big. We then drove to the end of the gorge to put in for our 14 day raft support trip. The Great Bend of the Yangtze is a very scenic and fun river. Lots of big-water class II to IV. Evan Garcia said the ww was the same character as that of the Grand Canyon. On day#3 we came across a wave that was as quality as Lachine or High Tension. It was difficult only being able to spend 4 surfs each there because of our schedual. There is a video of the wave on egcreekin.blogspot.com. On one of the days while the students were in class, Scott Doherty and I climbed a mountain to get a good look at our suroundings. It was very cool, I had never climbed a mountain before that. The rest of the 14-day trip went along smoothly with sweet camps and fun whitewater. Our next location was Dechin, on the Mekong river. This city is just across the valley from the 22,400 foot peak of Cawacarpa (not sure if thats how you spell it) but it was the most elevated thing I have ever seen, so spectacular

Joel